What is an atheist minister? with Gretta Vosper

August 5th, 2016 Episode 51

Hi and welcome to the Brainstorm podcast. This is episode 51 and today is August 5th, 2016. I’m Cory and my panel tonight are Angela, Rene, and Leo, with the always amazing Dave doing sound. We’re here in Roman Empire studios in Regina, Saskatchewan. Tonight’s show is brought to you by Reasonist Ink, atheist, skeptic, and science based apparel. You can find them at ReasonistInk.com. Tonight’s guest is Gretta Vosper the atheist minister of the West Hill United Church. She is also the founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity.

check out Gretta's website by clicking the picture

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You can listen to Part one of this episode >>>>>>>here(available on August 7)You can listen to Part two of this episode>>>>>>>here(available on August 14)

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music break

Usually I spend all my time absorbing information. I almost can't get enough. I listen to podcasts, audiobooks, and watch youtube videos when I'm not reading or busy doing something. As a result I almost never listen to new music. The last couple weeks I started listening to music a lot more and discovered a couple newer songs the first song is I Write Sins Not Tragedies by Panic at the disco, which helped me discover Heathens by Twenty One Pilots, and Gasoline by Halsey. All very cool songs. I hope you enjoy. Remember, you can get the full episode, including music by tuning into the live show on Spreaker or by becoming a patron on Patreon.

Part Two

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Circular cause and consequence is a specific aspect of the correlation doesn’t equal causation error, where someone actually thinks that a causes b to happen but then b in return causes a to happen. There may be cases of this being true but in many cases it leads to a circle of events that cannot end until one cause no longer has the consequence that causes it.

Atheism for Dummies part 15 – Apologetics part 3

Ever get started looking on Wikipedia and find out that you could follow the bread crumbs for a full month if you wanted to get all the details right. As a result, we’re only touching the very surface of any of these apologetics.

Informally, the word "miracle" is often used to characterize any beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth. Other such miracles might be: survival of an illness diagnosed as terminal, escaping a life-threatening situation or 'beating the odds'. Some coincidencesmay be seen as miracles.

A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many rational and scientific thinkers to dismiss them as physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out). The former position is expressed for instance by Thomas Jeffersonand the latter by the celebrated philosopher David Hume.

Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country.[6]

Bonus content

Hillary Clinton conspiracies, Jill Stein is anti science, and being skeptical in politics.

Thanks to our PatronsRob and Nathan

Shift to reason update – No updates

We’ll record another half hour for our patrons. You can get that bonus content by becoming a patron at Patreon.com/brainstormpodcast. Patrons also get full ad free episodes the day before the regular feed including the music portion. I know some people really like that. Splitting the episodes makes it tough to include all the music that we play during the break. You can join us for the next live broadcast by following us on Spreaker. Just enter Brainstorm Podcast into the Spreaker search bar or you can go to our website brainstormblog.net and check out the live show page and the upcoming events page.

There are some upcoming conferences in Canada, there’s the annual Non conference, this year in Niagra Falls on August 13th and there’s the AB Secular conference on September 15th and 16thin Edmonton. I’ll post links to the facebook pages for all of those in the show notes.

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Thanks to Dave for our intro music, thanks to Alix Capper Murdoch for doing the voice over for the intro and for some of our ads, and thank you to Jason Comeau for our outro music. You can find his stuff at www.aloststateofmind.com

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Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you in a couple weeks when we have Callie Wright from the Gaytheist Manifesto podcast on .